I made a list. What is the worst?
How am I wrong? What should come first?
Too Not Like Everybody Else, but how?
In subtle ways that hardly show.

Fitting this world while I’m told I’m not.
A puzzle piece, apparently, not finding a slot.
You’re puzzled by me and you think it’s a shame.
But it’s just your brain not getting my brain.

Language chosen to hurt and label.
To create a discourse: ‘You are not able’.
Words not chosen with thought or care
Problems invented that are not there.

‘Don’t be like you, be like me,’ you say
As if I shouldn’t be this way.
But this way is me. Work harder to like it.
Instead of teaching me to fight it.

Take your “Disorder”, your “Disability”,
Stick it up your arse. Don’t apply it to me.
Years of burn-out now ensue.
From thinking I should be like you.

I own my mind, my thoughts, my brain.
No two humans should be the same.
When space and light and peace are mine,
I really couldn’t be feeling more fine.

A blend of individuality that makes up me.
I only see fault with society.
Don’t bother that you can’t make me fit
That there is my problem. That really is it.

Surviving this negativity is quite a feat.
So
Knock knock.
See? – I’m whole and complete.

Autism awareness month (April) is upon us again. For hundreds of thousands of autistics – particularly we adults who are able to “own” our own autism and do not have to suffer at the hands of well-meaning (and not so well-meaning) non-autistic “experts”, the Autism Speaks awareness campaign is a harmful and insulting campaign with unpalatable ideas of a cure, and focusses on insulting and distressing notions of faults and fixes rather than the education and acceptance that society needs.

Please don’t be “autism aware”. Please don’t “Light it up blue”. If you do, you clearly still have A LOT to learn. Please educate yourself with the words of autistic people themselves. We are all different and we have a lot of experience to pass on.

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About me and this blog

Hi. Welcome to a Voice Released.
I started this blog in 2009 to blog my creative writing. It soon became clear I was using it as a form of communication, for not only was I freeing the voices of the characters I created but I had freed my own voice and was learning to share my thoughts and feelings in a way I had found inexplicably difficult through speech alone.
Along with several tiny flash fiction and other short stories I have written over the years, I have blogged about the struggles with anxiety and the discovery more recently that I am in fact autistic.
I was diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder in April 2014, and told that this was the condition formally described as Asperger’s Syndrome. Put simply I am autistic but in a less visible way. It is this very invisibility that prompts me to keep writing about the hidden struggles of Aspies, autistics and undiagnosed autistic people, and to share concerns and often very difficult moments and confusions that can hit us sometimes and leave us feeling all at sea and alone in the world.
I’ve always been obsessed with people, interactions and behaviours. I love to tell stories from the points of view of the characters who visit my head – particularly the misunderstood. I also like to have a rant now and then about society. Sometimes I combine the two!
Having autism and anxiety means that, even though it’s not obvious, I’m always working, always exhausted, always using too much adrenalin and cortisol, and always looking for ways to find peace, to reach out and to manage my health. Writing seems to cover all of these things and brings the satisfaction of creative production and a much needed release of creative energy.
In my other life I run a shop with my husband. He does the people stuff and I do the paper, organising and money stuff. I also have an organic vegetable garden and try to grow and cook as much of my own produce as possible and grow plenty of things for bees and butterflies, while trying to run a home and be a good enough mum to three children between the ages of 11 and 21. I insist on fitting photography into that mix too and force myself to take at least one photo every day. I keep a journal for that on blipfoto.

If you’re interested in my autism discovery and assessment, the blog entries between February and April 2014 would be a good place to start.

About Us

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A wonderful serenity has taken possession of my entire soul, like these sweet mornings of spring which I enjoy with my whole heart. I am alone, and feel the charm of existence in this spot, which was created for the bliss of souls like mine. I am so happy, my dear friend, so absorbed in the exquisite sense of mere tranquil existence, that I neglect my talents. I should be incapable of drawing a single stroke at the present moment; and yet I feel that I never was a greater artist than now.